


my loudest emotion

by strangetowns



Series: saw your face, heard your name [4]
Category: Lovely Little Losers
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Slurs, Swearing, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bartender is silent for a moment, and there is a strange look in her eyes. Rosa finds herself wondering if she wants to try to figure out what it means, and that’s even stranger.</p><p>“That,” she says, “is the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard.”</p><p>The fact that Rosa isn’t even offended is, probably, the strangest thing of all.<br/>-<br/>Day 6 of Lovely Little Femslash Week - Fake Dating</p>
            </blockquote>





	my loudest emotion

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively: Rosa spends a Friday Night at Navarre Bar and proceeds to be pleasantly surprised by the bartender. Hint - it's not Peter.
> 
> This fits the prompt of fake dating by the skin of its teeth, but it fits, I promise. I'm so entrenched in rarepair hell and I don't even care.
> 
> Thank you to [niuniujiaojiao](http://niuniujiaojiao.tumblr.com/) and [boxesfullofthoughts](http://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/) for the beta'ing. Title is from Prinze George's “[Upswing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LCMxd1CGs)”. Warning for gendered slurs.

Rosa is fairly certain she’s the kind of person who should know what to do with her Friday nights. She’s spent Friday nights skiing down a mountain in the Alps, or sailing above fields of grass in a hot air balloon. She’s slept in a planetarium, once or twice. She’s broken into Parisian museums, for Christ’s sake.

So, really, how she ended up in a dinky little Wellington bar on her own this Friday night is honestly quite beyond her.

“Another?” the bartender asks, glancing down at her empty glass.

“Make it a double, please and thank you,” Rosa says, bored. She can’t imagine putting energy into pretending she’s interested.

“Try and sound more excited, if you can,” the bartender says lightly, without missing a beat. There is no malice in her voice, and the smile playing at the corner of her mouth is mischievous. The comment is unexpected enough that it makes Rosa’s spine straighten, just a little.

“I’m not paying you to get excited,” Rosa says, reaching for the now-full glass that the bartender places in front of her.

“No, that’d be a different job, wouldn’t it?” And then she actually  _ winks _ , daring to meet Rosa’s eye with fire in her gaze, and for about half a second, Rosa reconsiders the idea that Navarre Bar could be anything but interesting.

The moment passes. The bartender turns away to another customer, and Rosa turns her thoughts to the mediocre alcohol in front of her.

It is lovely to be home again. Of course it is. It would take a special kind of heartless not to miss her family and friends when she was gone, or not to be glad to see her brother again now that she’s back. It’s what they always say about traveling, that distance makes the heart grow fonder, and that homesickness is an inevitability.

They rarely talk about how sick she feels, sometimes, to be home. Not that there’s anything wrong with being home, or anything inherently better about not being there. But the thrill of newness was, oddly, something she’d gotten used to buzzing under her skin, and everywhere she’s gone in the world, the air tastes different. She’s fallen in love with learning what other countries taste like when she lets them fill her lungs, has loved it so much that New Zealand’s air, achingly familiar when she first stepped out of the plane the first day she got back, is almost disappointing.

And, anyway, maybe she likes being swallowed in a crowd of people who she can’t understand and who can’t understand her. Maybe she likes living somewhere her name doesn’t mean anything, or matter.

“Are you okay? You look heartbroken, or something.”

Rosa looks up, momentarily startled by the blunt statement. The bartender, with her hair curling wildly about her ears and the stare that burns, is back. If it had been said by anyone else, she probably would have been too annoyed to bother answering.

“Of sorts,” she says instead of the dozens of biting things that run through her head, because for some reason she can’t fathom, she actually finds herself unwilling to say them.

“Who’s the schmuck? I’ll kick his ass for you,” the bartender says unconcernedly, as if her arms aren’t skinny as hell. The thing is, Rosa almost believes her.

“No schmuck,” Rosa says, and to her mild surprise, she finds herself the tiniest bit amused.

“Mm.” The bartender tilts her head, casually curious. “Schmuckess, then?”

“No, no.” Rosa takes a sip from her glass. “Could have been, though. Could have been either, I suppose, if this heartbreak involved a person.”

“Ugh, metaphorical heartbreak. The worst kind. You’re not a poet, are you?” She squints. “Or, god forbid, a  _ theater person _ ?”

“What’s wrong with poets or theater people?” Rosa says, feeling obligated to act defensive, though she’s not, really.

“Nothing, I dabble in both.” She grins again. “So what is it, then?”

Rosa purses her lips, trying to decide if she thinks this person whose name she doesn’t even know is worth her honesty. But, singlehandedly, the bartender has managed to make this night something she might consider remembering, which is no small feat, especially not for the amount of time they’ve spent actually talking to one other. She decides to take a stab at it, and also to pretend the choice isn’t completely unlike her.

Whatever. She can just blame it on the shitty alcohol.

“I’ve been overseas for the past few years,” Rosa says. “I miss traveling. I miss being in different countries, seeing different things. Everything here, it’s like…” She rubs the tips of her fingers together, searching for the right word. “Grayscale, in comparison.”

The bartender is silent for a moment, and there is a strange look in her eyes. Rosa finds herself wondering if she wants to try to figure out what it means, and that’s even stranger.

“That,” she says, “is the most pretentious thing I’ve ever heard.”

The fact that Rosa isn’t even offended is, probably, the strangest thing of all.

“Yeah, probably,” Rosa answers. She probably  _ is _ pretentious, or at least is considered pretentious by many who meet her. She doesn’t see why she should let that fact bother her. After all, it doesn’t seem to bother the bartender.

Maybe it was how insulting she hadn’t sounded. She hadn’t been mocking Rosa or looking down on her. She’d just been stating the truth, as directly as she could. It’s something Rosa can’t help but admire.

“Interesting, though, at least,” the bartender says breezily. “You’re an interesting one.”

“So are you,” Rosa says, measuring her words on a breath.

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” she says.

“You should,” Rosa says back, and the flames in the bartender’s eyes positively dance.

She looks over to the side, then, and groans. “Shit, more customers.”

Rosa snorts. “Isn’t that a good thing for you?”

“I only really care about one of them, presently,” she replies easily, and, right before she leaves, winks  _ again _ . Rosa is impressed at her audacity, and at the fact that it actually, for some reason, makes her heart skip a beat.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to ask the bartender with no name if she’s going to be making a habit of that, so Rosa turns back to her drink, the only other thing of real interest in this bar, as marginal as it is. She can see little particles of dust floating around in her glass, suspended in the murky liquid, barely visible in the dim lights. Frankly, she doesn’t really want to drink anymore. Nor, however, does she want to leave the bar. Interesting how that works out.

It’s at that moment, of course, that her elbow is tapped, and an infuriatingly male voice drawls, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Can’t you see I already have one?” Rosa says immediately, trying to swallow her irritation down. Her friends always say she frowns too much, and though this guy probably deserves it, for now she’ll give him the great privilege of the benefit of the doubt. She is, after all, feeling particularly magnanimous tonight.

“One can never have too many, right?” the man says. She stares forward and refuses to give him the pleasure of putting a face to his voice.

“Oh, but I do believe one can,” she retorts.

“Come on,” he says. “You’re  _ gorgeous _ , and I want a chance to get to know you. I love me some curly hair.”

There is no sense, now, in swallowing down her irritation, or her righteous fury. She opens her mouth, scathing remark at the ready.

“Sorry, schmuck, she’s already taken.”

Lo and behold, the bartender has returned, one hand on her hip, her eyes on fire.

“By who?” he challenges.

Before Rosa can object, before she can even think of anything to say – “I’m very happily single, thank you very much” or “why the fuck do you need to know?” – the bartender’s face has split into a wide, wolfish grin.

“Me,” she says. Any words Rosa could possibly utter die away in her throat.

“Oh.” Though Rosa does not look, she can tell his eyes are darting from woman to woman. “That’s – “

“If the word threesome escapes your mouth, I will not hesitate to cut your tongue out and shove it down your throat,” the bartender says cheerfully.

Immediately, his whole demeanor changes. “Frigid bitch,” he spits, and then, thankfully, god bless the earth and heavens above, he deigns to leave.

“Thanks, and don’t come again!” the bartender yells after him.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Rosa says, though she can’t really find it in herself to be angry. “I can handle myself.”

“No, I didn’t have to.” She shrugs. “But I wanted to.”

“I don’t even know your name, and you just pretended to be my girlfriend,” Rosa points out. “A bit forward of you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s fine, pretending to be the girlfriend of cute people happens to me on the daily.” She grins sharply. “Jaquie Manders, at your service.”

“And I, Rosa Jones, am eternally grateful,” Rosa says dryly, pretending her stomach does not do a tiny backflip to hear this girl call her  _ cute _ . Jesus, what is she, a schoolgirl?

“You look so disgruntled right now, it’s almost hilarious.” Jaquie slides a napkin across the bar. “Here, the better to wipe that look off your face. Trust me, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.”

“Wow.” Rosa takes the napkin, even as she tries her best to sound unimpressed. “You think you’re so clever.”

“That might have been a little cheesy,” Jaquie admits, but there are no apologies in her voice. The fire in her eyes does not die away.

“Just a bit.”

“Still, it worked, didn’t it? I did get you to take my number.” And with that, she winks for what is the third time, and for the third time, Rosa’s heart does something in her chest she can’t quite control.

Rosa glances down at the napkin. Ten digits sprawl across its crumpled edge like little birds, signed with _jaquie m_ _xo_ in cramped handwriting. She runs a finger over Jaquie’s phone number and, for the first time that night, smiles.

Maybe it has worked, at that.


End file.
